A sea of Navan purple greeted visitors to The Business Travel Show and The Meetings Show in June, as the travel and expense management specialist marked the official launch of Navan Events.
But behind the highly visible launch campaign was a much bigger story. Navan is investing in the expansion of its global meetings and events business, bringing together Reed & Mackay’s established agency expertise with its own travel, expense and technology platform.
The company is now integrating its events teams, services and technology into one global offering, while recruiting for new roles and expanding its capabilities across the UK, US and other markets.
micebook caught up with Galen Grady, senior vice president and general manager of Navan Events, to find out why the move represents far more than a rebrand and what comes next for the business.
More than a rebrand
Navan acquired Reed & Mackay in 2021, but its meetings and events operation had continued to operate somewhat independently of Navan’s core technology platform.
That is now changing. Following the launch of Navan Events in June, the company is making what Grady describes as a “conscious effort” to bring Reed & Mackay’s events teams and service expertise together with Navan’s technology platform under one unified proposition.
“Reed & Mackay has such a strong brand and a strong history of service and quality, while Navan has been a disruptor in the technology space,” he says. “The idea is to bring together the best of both worlds: the best technology and platform, combined with the best people delivering the service.”
For existing Reed & Mackay clients, Grady says the transition will retain the high-touch service and event expertise they value while giving them access to Navan’s technology, content and global inventory.
Feedback gathered from clients during the integration process revealed a clear appetite for that combination. “The feedback was: ‘We love the Reed & Mackay service and we want the Navan technology.’ That is what we’re trying to deliver,” he explains. “It’s more than just the rebranding. It is unifying the services, the people and the platform.”
Bringing travel and events together
At the heart of the proposition is an all-in-one platform integrating venue sourcing, hotel RFPs, attendee registration, travel management and financial reporting.
It also brings meetings and events activity into the same ecosystem as Navan’s business travel and expense services, giving organisations greater visibility across their total spend.
“Meetings and events spend has historically been quite scattered across departments, whether it’s a 12-person offsite or a 200-person sales kick-off,” says Grady. “Now you can bring it all into one central area, so a travel manager or business leader has more visibility over the entire programme.”
As well as providing a clearer picture of expenditure, the platform can support duty of care, budget forecasting and policy compliance. Grady points to areas such as standard contract clauses and attrition terms, which can be difficult to manage consistently when employees use separate tools, spreadsheets or direct supplier relationships.
“If you don’t have a centralised tool, it’s hard to enforce that policy and people can go rogue,” he says. “The idea is to bring everything together on a platform that is good for users, so they want to use it rather than going directly to suppliers or doing it on their own.”
The integration also gives companies a more complete view of individual events by capturing venue costs, accommodation and attendee travel in one place.
“How cool would it be if you’re a travel manager and you can go onto your Navan dashboard and see all the corporate travel and meetings and events travel together?” says Grady. “You can aggregate it, cut it by department or person and see how much you are actually spending on offsites, meetings and events.”
Combining technology with human expertise
While technology underpins the proposition, Grady is clear that Navan does not see it as a replacement for experienced event professionals.
Corporate clients can use the platform to manage smaller or less complex requirements, while also accessing specialist support for venue sourcing, contract negotiation or full-service event management.
“At the end of the day, events are a people business,” he says. “You need someone who really understands what the event is and what you are trying to get out of it, because every meeting or event has an objective or goal.” The aim, he adds, is to harmonise the work of those event managers with the technology platform.
AI is already being used to support both clients and Navan’s internal teams. A chief of staff planning a 15-person offsite, for example, can use the platform’s AI assistant to search by destination, budget, style or atmosphere. The technology can suggest suitable venues, estimate costs and recommend activities or group dining options.
Grady also sees significant potential for AI to remove some of the administrative burden carried by event professionals.
“I don’t think anybody in the events space has ever really liked doing post-event reconciliation,” he says. “We can use AI to help aggregate the invoices and all that detail and build that reconciliation for you. It can take away some of those administrative tasks and help streamline workflows.”
Navan currently provides carbon and emissions reporting through the platform and is exploring how AI could help it capture more complex event-related data, including transfers, activities and group dining.
Investing in global growth
Alongside the technology integration, Navan is expanding its events operation and recruiting new talent.
The company is currently recruiting a VP of Event Management to lead its UK and European operation. Its current events team is strongest in the UK, supported by teams in the US and a smaller presence in Australia, but Grady says its global client base requires an increasingly international service offering.
Grady says the company’s current expansion is organic, with Navan looking to build its teams and use its existing corporate client base to support the growth of the events offering.
“Our customer base is global and there is an expectation for a global offering,” he says. “We’re in growth mode and trying to deliver the best event management experiences to clients wherever they are.”
Emma Chamberlain, who joined Reed & Mackay as commercial director of events in 2024, is also playing a central role in the evolution of the business. She is working closely with Grady to shape Navan Events’ global supplier strategy and develop the content and inventory available through the platform.
“In corporate travel, your lines of business traditionally include rail, flights, hotels and cars, but in meetings and events there are venues, activities and a whole other range of requirements,” says Grady. “Emma has become a very trusted partner in helping us understand what our global strategy should be for everything that is MICE-related.”
The focus is on giving clients access to the most appropriate options rather than restricting them to a narrow group of preferred suppliers. “We need to offer the best inventory at the right time to the right customer,” he adds.
A growing role for events
Navan’s investment comes as group travel accounts for a growing share of corporate travel activity. Grady believes this is partly a response to increasingly distributed and hybrid working models, as companies look for opportunities to bring their people together in person.
“We’re seeing more distributed workforces than ever, but companies still want to bring people together,” he says. “Even AI companies are travelling a lot, with people going to the same place at the same time.”
That demand is also increasing the need for agencies to provide international reach. “They want to work with a company that can serve their needs globally,” he adds.
He also expects responsibility for more internal meetings, offsites and group travel to move under the remit of corporate travel managers. Large customer events and marketing-led experiences may remain with specialist event teams, but departmental meetings and internal group travel are increasingly likely to sit alongside wider travel programmes.
That shift strengthens the case for integrating meetings, events and travel rather than managing them as separate categories.
“We view it as a unified offering rather than a bolt-on,” says Grady. “It’s a global role, a global function and it’s built through the platform.”
“It’s an exciting time because this is something Navan is prioritising and making a big push into,” he adds. “We’re taking meetings and events very seriously.”